#unmonastery

[mothdid]

Code/unCode

Tracing Monastic Patterns 

(unMonastery)

[sunlitrevolution]

THE STORY OF UNMONASTERY

“When it comes to work it is increasingly difficult to reconcile making money with making sense. People do work to make a living. Others do work to make meaning. But the two works are not the same work.” 

 The unMonastery is a social clinic for the future. It is a place-based social innovation is aimed at addressing the interlinked needs of empty space, unemployment and depleting social services by embedding committed, skilled individuals within communities that could benefit from their presence.

It is a non-profit project that aims to challenge existing dependency chains and economic fictions, developed in collaboration with EdgeRyders LBG over the course of 18 months. Edgeryders started out as a project by the Council of Europe and the European Commission, which after termination developed into an international, community-run social enterprise.

[wolfliving]

Communal Kitchen Life at the Matera Unmonastery

http://unmonastery-wiki.mirelsol.org/doku.php?id=the_kitchen

The Kitchen

The unMonastery consists of a diverse group of very different people living in the same building provided by a host community. How they can become a family was one of the main questions from the inception of the idea. Culturally accessible for all, eating together, and cooking for each other is an obvious start. Inviting our slowly growing number of friends and acquaintances for dinner was the least risky manner to prove ourselves as trustworthy: even if the food was not the quality of average Italian cuisine, it was at least unlikely that as hosts, we trespass social norms we were unaware of.

1.0 It has been stated that feeding the unMonks shall be the key to the survival of our initiative.

“unMoaners sublimate. Our most significant strategy is the heaping upon one another of generous portions of incredibly sumptuous foods. Twice a day seemingly haphazard pairings of the house’s inhabitants conspire to inspire. Turning the glories garnered from local markets into our agency of appreciation and bombarding one another with the best we have on offer, we can get carried away.” 1) 
“It is written somewhere in the Lore of the unMonastery that the Kitchen shall be the Queen of the House. This was most clearly voiced in preparatory discussions between Rita Pacheco and Antonio Elettrico. In the face of subjectively perceived poverty, solace would inevitably be sought in the creative act of creating and sharing meals.

”The sensuous quality of fresh local produce has brought us great satisfaction. For one habitually living further up the food chain, and therefore being routinely fed by agro-bizniz, it has been a liberation to share my greens with an occasional snail. That some of the late winter local vegetables don’t immediately awaken the warmth of familiarity, can also challenge the taste buds and digestive juices; sometimes our cooking committees can be accused of substituting quantity for quality. However, early on in the group process we elected to outlaw the natural human psychic ventilation system of the 'complaint' [ Note: the above statements are pure fact; the author is not indulging in hidden complaining.]“

At the same time, others of our crew have been subject to the most cruel ‘Tyranny of the Oppressed Minority’; accepting imposed levels of vegetarianism that go unnoticed by the adherents, but that push the digestive tracts of others into virulent rebellion. Surrounded by old-fashioned shops offering short-journeyed meat, and magnificent fish counters laden with enticing often unknown species, this deprivation easily amounts to culinary torture. ”The delicate balance of the Healing Power of Mealtimes is dependent upon several factors. We feel that we have secured a satisfactory source of quality raw materials. We have a healthy competition to create works of art in a room that was long unheated, and upon an uncooperative brand-new obsolete technology from the first generation of the induction stove. That we are still under equipped with basic tools like soup spoons and chopping knives that chop and that would make life a touch more civilised, should soon be rectified.

What is harder to see the solution for, is the projected life of the kitchen as a functioning unit for more than two cooks and more than ten eaters. The need to model this our primary source of harmony upon large scale cooperative kitchen operations was spoken about on the ER platform prior to the LOTE and, as the meeting that commissioned this emotional health report clearly indicated, it remains the one place of recurrent frustration — the unMonastarians are willing to use their outreach project budgets to rectify matters, but feel that hidden criteria for what is an acceptable solution that pit beauty against functionality are being employed. That this has dragged out into our second month of residency and until our second wave of unMonasterians has cost us much valuable time and psychic resources.“ 2) 3) My couchsurfer regularly visited the monasteries of Vietnam and perked up when she heard of my upcoming plans. She reported one management strategy direct from the abbott's mouth: “Chose the most pleasant, easy-going monk to administrate the kitchen, it keeps the whole compound happy and harmonious.”

The kitchen also became a barometer of the atmosphere in the house: when we functioned well as a community, there was a lightness and grace at mealtimes. When the stress increased and a lost sense of purpose appeared, it was accompanied by bickering over portions, quality, and infrastructure management (read dishwashing). 4) In times of crises, people often opted to eat out, unheard of in the volumes preceding (?) the actual unMonastery in Matera.

Cooking Good

Among the virtues professed by the unMonastery kitchen was responsible eating. We ate morally good food that arrived upon our bowls through thoroughly approved pathways. Considered to be the holiest of the holy were ‘Gifts and Barter’. Otherwise we entered the Market. Rigourous bookkeeping registered every expenditure as to the source and journey it had taken. Biological products from local sources whose name we kept forgetting were more virtuous than fairtrade; fairtrade more defensible than cheese from a far off corner of the country. In the unMonasterian gastronomic heavens unSeasonable vegetables were frowned upon. And frown we could.



Money Talks


 Compromises occurred and reoccurred: we strove to maintain an inorganic boundary of 6€ a day per head which would also accommodate a generous stream of guests. To get all this into place presto required negotiation, negotiation requires language. The task of filling fridge and larder was embraced by the one inhabitant that had no pressing hidden agenda to exercise himself in the marketplace. Accompanied at times by a loyal two-armed sidekick, unBrother Siri sought to solve all problems of a logistical, supply chain and economic nature. But, in allowing him to dodge tourist prices on our behalf, we surrendered a huge chunk of our natural daily interface. Even when mutely slinking through the aisles at Supermimo’s, we would have soon found ourselves engaged in free-range organic conversation. Instead of cultivating our interface, our search for virtue helped prolong an unsustainable silence.

1) Sometimes it goes wrong. Bland pasta tastes like bland pasta — the lack of love resounds around the unMon eating hall. Harmony does not reign… Sumptuousness in its absence can expand beyond the merely insipid — it easily becomes an affront to virtue. Incompetence, or an injudicious spice quota, reflects not a bad day in the kitchen but disdain for the collective. To serve a flat sauce or even an over-ornate show-off of a salad is to kick the captive audience where it hurts. Vows have been broken for less… http://bembodavies.com/2014/07/28/the-currency-of-grace/

2) http://bembodavies.com/2014/03/06/the-health-of-the-idea-fountain/

3) Arguably, this paragraph is a prime example of “complaining”, practiced enthusiastically by early unMonasterians, before the establishment of the rule of No Complaining.

4) This is sloppy journalism, too easy and not nuanced. My line about berating each other through culinary excellence is closer to the truth and includes all the greys of being adult and civilised while weeping inside. To paint us as petty souls is of no interest. Yes, you took too much salad, to mention this is not bickering, but correct politics of collective life. Whether it is latent aristocratic tendencies or myopia is immaterial.

*********************************************

Chef of the meal + helper duties

Deciding what to cook Cooking Preparing table Cleaning table Washing Dishes Tidy up kitchen Notify Cristiano if some common use ingredients (eg. salt, oil, garlic...) are going to end / are ended

You can ask for help, negotiate shifts, but you are responsible for the 7 steps to be accomplished.

Deciding what to cook

Understand for how many you are cooking for checking for absence or guest in "Eaters Calendar" Check if there are leftovers > use them Check if there is anything, particularly vegetables, that are going bad > use them (to help it is possible that Cristiano will attach “To be cooked ASAP board” to highlight those, if you notice more add to the list) Be creative with what we have in the kitchen. If you are cooking using ingredients in the "Troublesome boards", try to provide alternatives If you don't know how to cook something or how to combine present ingredients, ask for suggestions to someone so to respect previous points

Eaters Calendar

For each period will be displayed how many unMons are in the unMonastery. If you know you'll be not present for a meal, you'll write -1. If you invite guest put a +n

The Kitchen - The Empress of the House

Kitchen Design Patterns

Problem / Implementation

Maintaining Order

Establish a clear kitchen governance model that suits your conditions - ensure this is printed and affixed to a wall in the kitchen.

No centralised kitchen coordination

It's important kitchen duties and order be maintained through a top down centralised figure - Elect an 'Emperor of the Kitchen', this individual is responsible for enforcing kitchen rules; ensuring people do their washing up, cook meals on time, prioritise perishables so to minimise waste and maintain a sufficient flow of food.

No routine, dirty washing up everywhere.

Dirty washing up is a major morale killer and point of conflict in collective living situations, the unMonastery model resolves this with a Kitchen Rota for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. At the beginning of each week all unMonasterians and guests must sign up to 3-4 cooking slots, cooking is always done in pairs; you are responsible for the food and the clean up. If you invite guests and you're not cooking, you must help out.

Food Shopping

One person manages, money collected out of common pot, additional purchases evaluated and reimbursed after end of one month cycle. Single spreadsheet used for tracking purchases (local, organic, no alternative).

Zero Waste

Implement a Zero Waste System from the start, requires strong enforcer/ no alternative system, this should be based in the Kitchen - the enforcer is responsible for ensuring everyone knows what is and isn't recyclable, when paper/organic/glass should be put out for collection.

Poisoning People

Upon entering the unMonastery it's essential that individuals flag allergies and if present these should be attached close to the cooker, so that individuals who are cooking don't accidentally poison there fellow unMonasterians

Militant Veganism

Given the nature of the unMonastery, it's quite likely you will find individuals who are staunchly against the consumption of meat, it's important you establish a middle ground - but regardless upon what is agreed, it's essential that meat and non-meat cooking implements are kept separately

===== Description (with anecdote) =====

Within the unMonastery the kitchen functions as the heart of the operation, everything you do will be determined by the way in which you run your kitchen. You must serve the kitchen in the same way as it serves you - acknowledge that it is your core communication infrastructure, both for internal organisation and as a tool for inviting people from outside. As such you should take care to pick an appropriately sized room in your building, ensure there is space for a large dining table, that can host up to 10-20 individuals.

Always keep it clean, be militant in your approach and ensure your daily routine is able to support the cleanliness of the space.

QUOTE AND OR ANECDOTE FROM HAPPENINGS.

Above and beyond cleanlinesses part of running a successful kitchen is ensuring everyone is fed and dietary needs are catered for well. In order to do this efficiently in Matera we went through a series of steps in the first month to ensure we would be well provided for going forward, this work was established by Cristiano as is as follows:

Visit all local suppliers within the town or city you are based, note down all prices and quality of food (Matera example), your bias should be ethical over financial, evaluate the price and distance for Local, Organic and possible alternatives.

Since you're going to be buying in large quantities try and establish deals with store owners, or consider trading skills for food.

Once you've identified the appropriate suppliers (locally produced, well priced food), establish a rolling weekly schedule for doing the shopping. When living in a small city or town, it's important to build up personal relationships with the producers and suppliers, so ensure the same person goes to the same stores on a rolling basis. In order to get a good price ensure who ever is collecting initial prices for food stock is of the same nationality as the country you're in.

Use the unMonastery Food Analytics system to maintain an overview and keep track of all finances and data relating to your food consumption.

Testing Time

Testing Time: unMonastery:Matera / 01/02/2014 - 31/07/2014 Participants - Ben Vickers, Bembo Davies, Kei Kreutler etc Contact Details: [email protected]

[stacktivism]

Mobilising Infrastructure Space - #Berlin - #Transmediale 2015 Workshop

Presentation / Discussion. This session will seek to unpick how the use of existing infrastructural protocol, language and narrative can potentially be used.

DAY: Sat 31.01

DUR: 120 min

PLC: hkw foyer

Presentation / Discussion - At Foyer Hub 1

“The activist need not face off against every weed in the field but rather, unannounced, alter the chemistry of the soil.” - Extrastatecraft, Keller Easterling

What do we consider to be the critical infrastructure of our age? And does there now exist a common language that could facilitate its shared use, reappropriation and mobilisation?

This session will seek to unpick how the use of existing infrastructural protocol, language and narrative can potentially be used to shift global information landscapes, broadband urbanisms, and free trade atopias.

The session will be led by Jay Springett, responsible for the network artifact #stacktivism; initially launched into the Twitter-sphere as an attempt to generate debate around, the emergent conversations and line of enquiries around infrastructures and the relationship we have to them. This gathering will open with the presentation of work by Erica Scourti and Tobias Revell who feature in this years Transmediale - after a series of short presentations for framing the subject at hand, discussion will then be opened out to those in attendance.

Jay Springett is a musician, writer, and communicator. He is concerned primarily with humans, organisations, technology, infrastructure, and the unseen intersection points of how these things co-exist and keep us alive. He also co-curates The Thought Menu: a nomadic talk and event series, and is passionate about DIY culture.

:: Requirements / Reading List ::

e-flux editorial “Quasi-Events” The Black Stack - Benjamin Bratton Holding Up the World, Part II: Time/Bank, Effort/Embankments - Elizabeth A. Povinelli The Negative Floats: Questions of Earth Inheritance - Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziherl “Infrastructure Fiction” - Paul Raven McKenzie Wark on Haraway, Marx, and #Accelerationism Tim Maly on the tragedy of the systemic sublime “The Container is not the Shipping” - Matthew Sheret No to NoUI - Timo Arnall Roads to power - Jo Guldi Someone else’s problem? - Paul Raven Designed conflict territories - Tobias Revell Infrastructure for Anarchists - Vinay Gupta Who owns the means of not dying? - Jay Springett

[cool2re]

unMonastery: μία διαδικτυακή κοινότητα ή πως οι χάκερ θα σώσουν τον κόσμο

unMonastery: μία διαδικτυακή κοινότητα ή πως οι χάκερ θα σώσουν τον κόσμο

Το ύψος του εαυτού του είναι και το κατακόρυφο όριο μιας ανάπτυξης που γεωγραφικά μπορεί να άγγιξε την ολοκλήρωσή του με το χτίσιμο του Sassi λειτουργικά όμως και σημασιολογικά η δραστηριότητα δεν έπαψε ποτέ αν κοιτάξεις το τεντωμένο νήμα που είναι καρφιτσωμένο πάνω σε κάθε χρονικό ορόσημο. Μέσα στη σιγή του επιβλητικού τοπίου νομίζεις πως ζωή υπάρχει μόνο όταν στις κόχες των λιθόκτιστων σπιτιών…

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[practicalrevolution]

Building a new society in the shell of the old can seem so impossibly hard. Capitalism, meanwhile, makes organizing ourselves look easy by paying us to pretend that’s what we’re doing. Maybe the longing for leaderless swarms in the protests of 2011 partly stemmed from the image of a team at a software conglomerate, or a noncommercial, open-source project nonetheless parasitic on its corporate sponsors. But the kind of democracy and community we glean from tech culture lacks a deep structure, a core; tech culture is particularly good at disguising the reality that its core has become investor returns and Wall Street IPOs. The CEO’s absolute authority dresses up like charisma. Rapt in admiration, we the people are being de-skilled out of actual self-organizing.

This article by Nathan Schneider in The Nation is a fascinating look at a "distributed think tank" called Edgeryders and their efforts toward establishing what they call an "unMonastery" in Matera, Italy. The unMonastery was a hackerspace dedicated to living cheaply and working on projects such as open-source alternative energy sources.

Essentially, the unMonastery attempted to self-organize in a way that disregarded, or at least sidestepped, the rules of capitalism, bringing together unused space with underutilized people to help build a better world. Does it sound impractical? Sure. But think about why: our system is rigged so that if you want to survive, let alone thrive, you need to possess a certain minimum amount of a fictional construct (money), and the amount you can gain on your own is set by an equally artificial beast (the market).* There are many ways to lose this game, but it's almost impossible not to play.

So, with this kind of revolution, the challenge is to play the game well enough to stay alive, while simultaneously testing new rules, which will only stick around if they're practical, feasible, and beneficial enough to outweigh the inevitable costs. It's inherently an experiment; failures are part of the process. And with each failure, we'll learn a little more about what the next system will someday be.

*Note: I am not arguing that wages are arbitrary! I did major in economics, after all. The point is that wages are set according to rules we made up, which are really great at rewarding people for generating capital and not as great at quantifying and rewarding the benefits we get from, say, teachers or social workers. These are human systems, not the laws of physics.

[aden12377-blog]

Pictures from the Soundscape event @unMonastery, Matera. A big thanks to faculty and students of UniBas, friends and locals to making a great evening for everyone. 

[uncube]

unMonastery, Matera, Italy

Source: uncube magazine uncu.be/12835325

Photo: Ben Vickers